


If I Could Help It

by Anonymous



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:48:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27589085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The road to pain-free punishment as a kid was a lot grittier than the unsuspecting reality Lance’s niece and nephew live now.
Kudos: 3
Collections: Anonymous





	If I Could Help It

When Lance was sixteen, he came to the tame realization that he’d become comfortable in his misery. That even with therapy and his spotty schedule of taking medication, there’s an ache that he just doesn’t have in him to repair.

“I know this is kind of sad to think, but…” Rachel trails off from where she sits beside Lance at the front porch’s table of their grandparents’ house. “You ever think the stuff we went through was actually worth it?”

Her long brown hair flutters in the summer breeze, flyaways shivering like restless sprouts in a storm’s wind. She gazes across the lawn to where Nadia and Sylvio toddle around in a chorus of loud screeches over the rest of their family’s chattering. And her eyes hold firm while they latch onto their grandfather’s tense figure near the kids, wearing an equally stiff expression, like his crooked smile takes as much muscle to use as the hands that clench either of his own arms.

Lance knows what they feel like around his wrists, squeezing his blood flow so tight that it’s rendered still, leaving the rest of him to cower in terror when he was as young as the children he watches now.

A few years back, they had another family reunion at their church for Christmas, and when Lance snuck down one of the dark halls and turned ‘round the corner, he saw the glittering downfall of gentle snow —a sight he rarely sees back in Arizona— drift downward beyond the glass doors and in the warm mellow spotlight of nearby lampposts.

He was so utterly enticed by the flurry of little white gems, that he dashed outside into the reverent night, too awestruck to mind his own bare feet as he padded across a crisp thin layer of snow and into what felt like a miracle.

His giggle was quiet and contained, almost as if muffled by the softened surfaces around him, and he watched as flakes latched onto his sleeves and skin before melting from a bodily warmth he just couldn’t help. The classic Christmas spirit made his heart pump and face flush as the tip of his nose was teasingly pinched by the wind's coolness.

But while one second the ground he walked on was a smooth, puffed slate of snow for his meandering, the next it had started to blister his skin unpleasantly in a brain-freeze kind of shock.

He looked over to where the church’s glass door rendered a foggy reflection of himself: a young boy caught at the mercy of both mother nature’s beauty and pain, where those delicate flakes cascaded onto his hair and shoulders, to his numb fingertips and cold feet. He was dwelling in painful peace.

But after making his way back toward the door and grabbing hold of the icy metal handle, it jostled. Once,  _ twice _ with nearly no budge, and he’d realized he made the dumb mistake of getting locked outside in the midst of blind excitement.

And the worst part was that he was afraid. Not of the slippery pavement, or the cold that had his body rattling, or his nasty fall later that shucked a layer of skin from his foot so deep that it took his blood a prolonged effort to eventually ooze onto the stark white snow—

He wasn’t  _ as _ afraid. Not when there was a chance he’d open those doors to a person that cared less for an injury and more for his misbehavior. Where a normal kid might get a bandage and fretful company, he dreads a humiliating smack across the mouth or a suffocating grip on his wrist more punishing than frostbite.

Lance was always lesser to his grandparents, the youngest son (and child in general) that never quite fit their image of an ideal, compliant McClain. And in his own parents desperate attempt to win their favor, he took the brunt of punishment from them too, albeit a more subsided kind of pain— just a scolding that tore apart his sense of self worth. Because a five year old should know not to pick the raspberries that weren’t ripe in Abuelita’s garden, right? Or an eight year old should bully himself into slumber rather than restlessly explore Abuelito’s antique collection, because surely the chance of knocking something over would get him a handprint wherever the man saw fit.

Or soldier through the ghost town of a church parking lot, being just as afraid as a warm haven’s facade as he is of burning white gems. Because if only he were to  _ “—be more like your brothers’, and this won’t be a problem anymore, Leandro.” _

Because being Lance, Leandro Sebastian McClain, is downright sinful when it comes to his family’s honor. And tearing a son down into borderline resentment against his own siblings, because they’re just a bunch of  _ Mister Perfect _ ’s, must be a job well done.

So as he watches those kids basking in a moment far out of reach from his own childhood,

remembers opening the church door, limping inside just to be met with Rachel’s soft yet fretful face in a relieving contrast to his own panicked reflection,

thinks of how he beat the odds of every expectation, with a still-rowdy reputation and fantasies of the smooth dark hair and smirk of someone who’s definitely not a  _ woman _ ,

he nods with a tired smile.

“Yeah.” He sighs, blood flowing and wrists unrestrained. Nadia and Sylvio tumble away to Lisa for more graham crackers, leaving Abuelito to stand taut and alone at the rose bush with no freedom to reign with abuse after his son had finally taken a stand. “If it means they’ll live without it.”

Rachel is aware he’s referring to the kids, and as her dank blue eyes turn mellow with an exhausted kind of compassion rolling off her shoulders, Lance can see his reflection again. His twin.

“I figured the same.” Because his sister gets it, and if she can breathe, then he can too.


End file.
